Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

We have a more comprehensive empirical picture of how humans form beliefs now than we have ever had in history. There are countless pitfalls and errors that we fall into, and detecting them can be very difficult, particularly since we are using our cognitive faculties to evaluate the reliability of our faculties. Despite the difficulties, there are a number of procedural questions that we can ask about a particular case where we search for evidence, evaluate it, and draw a conclusion about it. Considering these questions as part of the evidence gathering and evaluation procedure can dramatically improve the accuracy of the resulting conclusion. Habitually considering these issues can develop the epistemic virtues that will make a person a far better thinker and decision maker. Here are the questions, in no particular order.

Is there any data? What exactly is the data? Have I conducted an exhaustive search?If there were significant counter evidence, would my search have found it? What else could it be? What would disprove the hypothesis? Has my enthusiasm for any particular hypothesis affected the evidence I have searched for or emphasized? Have I adequately considered other alternatives? Has search satisfaction led me to stop looking prematurely? Have I thought about it long enough? Has my enthusiasm for a hypothesis led me to relax evidential standards for it or increase them for competing hypotheses? Am I prepared to change my mind in light of new or different evidence? If there are personal, psychological, or social factors that tilt my evaluation of the evidence, would I be aware of it? Have I given more or less important pieces of information their appropriate amount of weight? Has the order of my consideration of the evidence affected my evaluation when it shouldn’t have? Has the recency or remoteness of some evidence in time affected my evaluation when it shouldn’t have? Is my memory supplying me with a representative picture of the relevant experiences?Are there external factors that may be giving me a tilted picture of the facts? Am I applying principles of justification here that are consistent with the ones I use normally? Did I sustain a high level of open-mindedness during the search and evaluation phase? Are the estimates of likelihoods or probabilities that I am employing accurate or realistic? Would the conclusion drawn withstand a reasonable level of skepticism?

There is no question that the systematic application of these standards of evidence and inference will produce better justifications and better conclusions. Consider ten types of belief formation that would benefit:

A doctor gathers and evaluates diagnostic evidence in order to identify and treat a life threatening disease.A jury member tries to decide whether or not a defendant is guilty of a capital offense. A mechanic considers a potentially costly problem in the engine of a car. A student reflects on which college to attend. An investor decides how best to spend investment capitol on the stock market. A couple tries to buy a house that best suits their various needs. A wife considers what appears to be evidence that her husband is cheating. A historian attempts to determine the sequence of events surrounding an important battle in an ancient war. A journalist gathers evidence about a corporation’s involvement in bribery of a corrupt politician. A plumber tries to figure out what’s wrong with the sink.

This all appears to be belaboring the obvious, but there’s a larger point here concerning religious belief. In every ordinary circumstance, it is trivially obvious that the questions concerning evidence gathering and belief formation from above make the difference between a good and bad decision, or a rational or irrational belief formation. It is also trivially obvious that in the vast majority of cases, a person’s belief in God would fail horribly by the same measures. That is, for most people who believe in God, that belief and the procedure that produced it would not pass muster for the minimally acceptable standards that we employ everywhere else in our lives. The anomaly is even more conspicuous when we consider that the God belief is, arguably, the single most important decision that a person can make in their life. For the most profound question, we employ the worst procedure for finding an answer. If your doctor, mechanic, investment broker, or plumber drew conclusions in the fashion that you drew your religions conclusions, you’d fire them without hesitation. If a jury member, wife, or journalist made decisions that way, they would do irreparable harm.

At a minimum, the believer needs to close the gross double standard gap here. At a minimum, if the believer wants the rest of us to take them seriously, he needs to subject his belief to the same general standards of justification that are vital everywhere else. Suppose the boss is romantically involved with a woman in the office who is, by most accounts, one of the worst employees. And it appears that as a result of her special relationship, she gets raises, special benefits, time-off, and lowered performance expectations. Then the boss announces that she has earned the Employee of the Month award, and he expects the rest of us to acknowledge her worthiness for the honor. Imagine how much worse it would be if there were no grounds at all for the award, but he insisted that we should all take it on faith that she is truly the most outstanding employee.

The hanky panky between you and your God is obvious to the rest of us, but you haven’t been able to get your head clear and see the situation with sufficient objectivity.

19 comments:

Matt, I'm totally convinced by what you've implied in your post. But what still prompts me to reply is my extremely recent experience (1 hour back) of debating with my friend of 6 years on matters concerning theism v/s atheism. When I questioned him about the need to believe in the veracity of scriptures as against considering them mere fiction, he got into all the expected circuitous explanation about how God's ways are mysterious and can't be fathomed by us, humans as we're the ones living in a "bubble" created by God.

When I accosted him with the PROBLEM OF EVIL and a simpler possibility that there's no God, and in fact all the phenomena and issues become more directly explicable by just doing away with the existence of God, he became very uncomfortable with the whole discussion.

I was very tempted to believe that his discomfiture had something to do with realization that his belief was rationally unsustainable if he were to keep his objectivity intact.

Then he asked me why does it bother me so much if he was keeping his beliefs to himself and not really fanatical in following them? I tried to point out that how it's unfortunate that because of their beliefs, people worship a nonexistent God and revere his fraudulent agents, and people like Edward Jenner and Joseph Lister get totally neglected who've had much greater contribution in betterment of human life. His approximate reply: "Jenner developed vaccine, and Lister, aseptic surgery, but the God created the Universe! So I can't worship the other two!" totally frustrated me. That was my encounter with the "stone-wall" yet again.

It's not that I'd had this debate with him for the first time. Each time we've had this discussion, he's ended up clinging to hrs beliefs even tighter as if I were going to snatch away something that belonged to him.

I've not encountered a single conversion to atheism only on the grounds of logical argument. Rather, believers tend to get more protective of their beliefs.

I'm sure nothing in this account must be new to you, but I was wondering if I should stop arguing with theists in this matter.

Also, I know you've not been much into forecasting, but I was curious what do you think is the global trend in atheism in view of so many educated people fervently holding onto their faith? I'm also worried how in my country, people take pride in being religious and educated at the same time... continued...

Doing so is deemed as something noble and courageous--sustaining one's belief and warding off any moral "contamination" by education. Had I persisted a bit longer with my friend in the debate, our rapport would have surely been affected. That's another problem with such discussions.

Interesting issues and case, Ketan. The scenario to describe is pretty common-the skeptic chases the believer round and round across a wide range of issues, with the believer throwing out the "God is a mystery" catchall to cover their irrationality, or changes the subject to "Why does it matter to you?" Neither one of these is an acceptable justification for irrational belief. "God is a mystery," is a tacit admission that their belief is unfounded and their view is incoherent. "Why does it matter to you?" is off the topic. An individual in the community doesn't get to just reject the standards of rationality, decision, and behavior whenever it suits them. All of our lives are deeply affected by the beliefs they adopt and the choices they make. Believing in God matters.

Are people convinced by atheist arguments? Sometimes. We plant the seed, but if the soil is rocky, it is difficult to find purchase, to co opt Jesus' analogy. It made a difference ultimately when people argued tirelessly for civil rights, for gay rights, for women's rights, and so on. But I hear you, it's a hard, thankless battle.

This blog gets thousands of hits a month. Some are just trolls who are sent into a rage by the arguments and flame me. But the message gets through to some. And I hope that people can make use of my arguments.

The point in this post is very simple: Your religious beliefs wouldn't satisfy the minimal levels of justification that you require everywhere else in your life. Therefore, your religious beliefs aren't justified, even by your own standards.

I'm not sure, but did you read my comments on your blog "hundred seasons to believe..." and the last week's blog? The former I point out as it's a very old post, and you might be not having an eye on it. TC.

I hope this does not sound too escapist, but I concluded that if I apply even moderately stringent criteria of rationality, honesty, helpfulness and strength of character all at once to people I come across, I'd be left with no friend, but only acquaintances. Since I'm replying through my cell phone, I can't quote your exact message, but I'm sure you'll know to which one am I replying. TC.

Much of human behavior is not based on rational thought, but purely a result of reward and conditioning. Your friend has been rewarded for his delusion thinking, therefore is unwilling to confront his current behavior. However, that frustration (cognitive dissonance) that you spark is the fuel of change. Just because you don't feel as though you made an impact today, give it some time. While he may have an effective denial system, our brains don't shut out all information that makes us uncomfortable. It is amazing to see how logic is infectious and your friend may begin to adopt some of your points without meaning to. I never had anyone sit me down and explain to me the delusion I was trapped in, but I suspect that it would have only been in more recent years that I would have really listened. Even worse, I think it would have taken someone fairly knowledgeable about why the Bible can't be trusted to convince me to consider an alternate viewpoint.

I am much more optimistic than some people about the feasibility and effectiveness of arguing of atheism. I argue for atheism and I find that it has an impact, I can see the impact in the retreats made by some theists in the course of the discussion. But there are mistakes that skeptics and atheist make that we should avoid. One such mistake is spending too much time and effort focusing on arguing for skepticism or atheism with just one person. Its much better to put the argument out there in a context where there are multiple people reading/listening or where we discuss with one person and then move on to other people. People are different and some religionists are much more open to persuasion than others.

This is dead on the money, Explicit Atheist. Thanks. We're engaged in consciousness raising and publicly refusing to let bullshit slide. Whether they acknowledge it or not, pressing back does have an effect. Thank, EA.MM

Hi all! The reason I believe my friend didn't acknowledge the possibility of nonexistence of God is the primal fear instilled in him that his each and every thought is being watched by the God, and the moment he even momentarily considers God to be absent would be certain kind of sin. There's, I think another fear, though it wasn't verbalized this very way: "what if there's inodeed a God? Will that not lead me to lose out on the free gifts on offer (by God to his believers)?" I think it must be apparent how overcoming the above-mentioned paranoia requires a certain kind of risk-taking behavior! It actually takes a leap of faith (in one's senses, reasoning and judgement) to stop believing in God.

I know since long that my friend has started fearing that he's taken a stand vis-a-vis God less honest than is possible and that was the cause of his discomfort. But would he honestly acknowledge this doubt to himself? No, because of the above fears.

I'll be honest above one thing. Even though I'm really pained to see people have the religious beliefs they have, I engage very few people in such discussions as most are not prepared to take a jolt in what they so firmly believe in as this kind of discussion requires certain "baseline" level of reflection on life, which is missing is most cases. Second, I haven't tried, but if were to broadcast my views in public, outside of my friends' circle, I face a somewhat small, but real risk of being beaten up! I'm not prepared for that. Third, most people just don't have the intellectual ability (sorry, if this sounds arrogant as I'm implying I do possess it myself, but I stick to my stand) to even for a moment imagine that such a complicated Universe did NOT have a creator. I think human minds are wired to think like if something exists, it has to be created. I do know the arguments beyond this point, too, in particular, how this creator would also require a creator in turn then, but the point is a real theist would shut off the mind at this point.

Earlier in the reply I said that I'm PAINED to see the kind of religious beliefs people hold is because they lead their lives as if "this" life as if it were just an "elimination round" before another life that's awaiting them, fully discounting the possibility in the process that this is the ONLY life they have...

...That's what I find most unfortunate, and I'd be very happy if all the believers would be "liberated" by the truth, but I have other concerns, too. I want professional (which is totally unrelated to philosophy) and academic satisfaction, too. I want to achieve a few less abstract things too, like earning money and resources for leading life happily. So, I can't afford to make converting people to atheism a single-point agenda of my life.This is maybe, escapist way of living, but I consider it a pragmatic course to take against the other more extreme option possible... I discussed atheism with my friend at least for 4 hours yesterday, when I could've spent that time studying to get ahead of competition. I've an exam to crack at the end of this year, the selection ratio in which practically is 1:40000 of (yes, better than 99.99 percentile), and on it my career hinges. So, when I look back at such debates, not always, but sometimes, I end up finding myself silly for "wasting" time like this. Though, it's Matt's blog, I wish to thank you all for responding to my reply, and would be happy to receive some feed back on my blogs, viz., "communalism", "free will" and "answers to criticism of atheism". Thanks, and take care.

A great set of questions and I suppose I could be Ketan's believing friend. But I'm not sure, au fond, what I actually believe in. I remember hearing Lord Winston (here in UK), a scientist and medical man of great distinction say that he was a practising, non-believing, Jew. Suddenly, I realised all these years that I was the equivalent Anglican.

There is an enormous amount of accumulated wisdom and goodness in the best of our faiths (yes, a lot of dangerous stuff in some sects etc too) and the whole sense of being an important part of a culture and community. I think if we followed our rational minds to their logical conclusions and threw it all out, society would loss something profound.

This sounds trite - and contradictory - as I would usually argue against most other irrational and useless things such as homeopathy, acupuncture, various other quack, usually Eastern, remedies or precepts were not just harmless as the kindhearted often claim. They play a part in addling people's minds, adding fog to any kind of debate on serious issues like health, say, to the general detriment of good decision making. And the sheer waste of time.

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.